Merchandise trade

The volume of world merchandise trade grew by an insipid 2.7% in 2015, the fourth year in a row that it had been below 3%. China’s slowdown and recession in places like Brazil weighed on trade. Between 1990 and 2008, trade grew twice as fast as world GDP on average; last year they were roughly similar. Statistics on trade value are gloomier still. In 2015 the value of merchandise trade in current dollar terms plummeted by 13% to $16 trillion, due largely to the strong dollar and plunging commodity prices. Although merchandise trade values seemed to stabilise in the first quarter of 2016 as dollar appreciation slowed and oil prices started to recover, the outlook is still subdued.